I came across an article this afternoon in the May issue of Talk magazine about the controversial Marc Rich pardon. The article quoted a number of people, including Sandy Weinberg, and identified him as having been the chief prosecutor of the Rich case in the early 1980s. I know Weinberg very well. In the past several years he has been one of Scientology's most aggressive, belligerent attorneys in Clearwater. Weinberg has carried out much of Scientology's harassive discovery in the Lisa McPherson civil case, deposing me and others in an extremely rude and confrontational way.

There was a particular quote in the article that caught my attention.

Speaking about his involvement in the Marc Rich investigation, Weinberg said:

"[Edward Bennett Williams, Rich's attorney] was the preeminent lawyer in the country. He came into my office, put his feet up on the desk, and said that [Rich's situation] had been going on for a long time, and we really needed to get it over with, and that they would pay us $100 million [if the U.S. dropped the criminal charges against Rich and Green].

"I said no. We can't walk away from [what was then] the biggest tax fraud in the history of the United States. These guys have got to answer the charges; they've got to face jail time. How could we ever prosecute another tax case if we allowed the biggest tax cheats in the history of the United States buy their way out of being prosecuted?"

When I read this quote from Weinberg, I was stunned. Here is a man who has gone to work for Scientology, an organization that has cheated the IRS out of hundreds of millions of dollars, that was the subject of a 40-year investigation by the IRS for tax fraud, that not only bought its way out of being prosecuted but did it after beating the agency down with thousands of harassive lawsuits, years of harassment and intimidation, and relentless personal pressure on the individual CID agents who were conducting the investigation.

How can Weinberg possibly adopt a position of moral high ground about his role in the Marc Rich case when he has become a tool not only for one of the biggest tax cheats in the history of the United States but also for the only organization that ever successfully required the IRS to make its settlement agreement secret? I don't know if it is astounding hypocrisy or willful ignorance that allows Weinberg to get out of bed every morning.

Whichever it is, there are a few things about his client that Weinberg - and anyone else who has bought into Scientology's version of reality -- needs to know.

I cannot begin to describe what it is like on a daily basis at the Lisa McPherson Trust. The stories of fraud and criminal abuse that are pouring into our office are beyond anything I would ever have believed possible during the nearly fifteen years that I was a dedicated Scientologist, ready to do whatever was needed to protect Scientology from its enemies. God forgive me for what I did to aid and abet this criminal organization, and God bless the people who are gaining the courage to come forward and tell their stories. Some of these stories have already been posted on our website, www.lisatrust.net, in affidavit form. Some of the victims have been interviewed on video, and these interviews are also available on our website. There are many, many more victims whose stories must be documented and made public.

This is the work of the LMT. This is the work Bob Minton has funded and is continuing to fund. Scientology is doing everything possible to keep us from documenting their criminal activities. The campaign to destroy Bob Minton and the LMT is being run from the highest levels of Scientology.

Only a small number of people at the top of Scientology know the truth:

Scientology is perpetrating a massive fraud on the citizens of every country in which it is operating, and the reason it is so important to paint Minton and the staff of the LMT as criminals is to discredit the very people who are working to expose their criminal conspiracy. Minton is Scientology's number-one target for destruction, because his funding is making the work possible. So far they have spent tens of millions of dollars to destroy him, via a vast network of paid operatives willing to do their dirty work on several continents, working around the clock to find a way to wipe him out.

So far, despite their best efforts, Scientology has not succeeded. They have operatives in Nigeria, England, Switzerland, Germany, France, Turkey and the United States, to name the countries we know about. They have put together a massive package of documents in an attempt to convince criminal authorities that Minton was involved in money laundering with a Nigerian dictator named Abacha, although Minton was not even in business by the time Abacha came to power.

They are trying to implicate Minton in criminal wrongdoing in Germany, but there is no evidence of a crime because none was ever committed. Minton just won a libel suit against Scientology in Germany after the judge ruled that there was no basis for the false claims they published in Freedom magazine. Most of these libelous statements involved Minton's business in Nigeria.

But a loss in one court in Berlin won't stop them. Bob has the Terminator after him. They won't stop until they've destroyed him, and their weapon of choice is the legal systems of countries around the world. RTC and OSA, with the help of very highly paid lawyers like Sandy Weinberg, Wally Pope, Elliott Abelson, Michael Hertzberg, Sandy Rosen, and many others all over the world, are running a tightly organized, concerted campaign to convince legislators, judges and prosecutors in the United States, Germany, France, Italy, and elsewhere that Robert Minton is a criminal and that the Lisa McPherson Trust is a hate group. They are trying to convince the courts that Minton is the head of a global conspiracy to destroy Scientology, and that he somehow stands to make enormous amounts of money by doing so. There was a time when I thought the scheme was ridiculous, but no more. It has become clear that Scientology's strategy is to create evidence of a criminal network, headed by Minton and populated by such nefarious characters as Grady Ward, Ken Dandar, Stacy Brooks, John Merrett, Keith Hensen, Arnie Lerma, Jesse Prince, Heather Bennett, Patricia Greenway, Peter Alexander, and many, many others, all at Minton's beck and call. It may seem ludicrous, but read the motions filed by Helena Kobrin, Rick Moxon, Wally Pope and the rest of Scientology's hired guns in RTC v. Ward, RTC v. Hensen, Heller v. Caberta, The Estate of Lisa McPherson v. Flag Service Organization, and a few others. Their strategy is to manufacture enough evidence through legal sleight of hand to create a RICO case against Minton and his associates. Our only defense is to educate these legislators, courts and prosecutors about the crimes of Scientology, to show them Scientology's motive for destroying us.

Scientology has convinced its own membership that we are dangerous criminals, but this is no surprise. The last thing they want is for their own members to begin to believe what is posted on our website. What is more surprising is that Scientology has been able to involve members of the Clearwater Police Department, the Committee for a Better Clearwater, even State Department officials in a concerted effort to deny Minton and the staff of the Lisa McPherson Trust our Constitutional Rights to Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Association, and to violate our Civil Rights.

Yet the truth is just the opposite. It is RTC and OSA that are directing a global conspiracy, not Minton and the LMT. It is a conspiracy to cover up massive, well-orchestrated fraud running in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and horrific criminal abuse of children and adults. At the heart of Scientology's strategy is the determination to destroy anyone who stands in the way of financial and political goals.

There have been many others who came before Minton and the LMT. Gabe Cazares, David Jordan, Ray Emmons, Rita Garvey, Paulette Cooper, Michael Flynn, Jon Atack, Priscilla Coates, Cynthia Kisser - there is no way to name all the people who have stood up to expose the truth about Scientology. All have been subjected to the same relentless attacks. Many have been silenced. Scientology hopes to do the same to Bob Minton and the LMT.

But we will not allow them to silence us. No matter what it takes, we will continue to provide a safe haven for Scientology's victims. We will continue to document the criminality that is the heart and soul of Scientology. We will not stop until criminal charges have been brought against all those responsible for these crimes.

Scientology has a habit of taking any post I make to ARS and submitting it to the courts, supposedly as "proof" of my sinister motives for exposing their criminal behavior. I am hoping they will submit this one. The courts desperately need this information.

Stacy Brooks

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